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Friday, July 1, 2011

800 Milligrams

inks on found index card divider / 2008

"Remedy" is the theme for this week on Illustration Friday. There really were a lot of works to pick from today to suit this posting. I grew up and live in a society with a deep-rooted drug culture. Being a midnight toker, I am often inspired by this facet of our carnival of life through cognitively altering my consciousness via the few relatively safe substances I'm willing to use. These experiences and the drugs themselves do surface in my work from time to time.

There is a remedy for every malady in the circus we call America- and you can have them all. For 40 years, our country has waged a world-wide War on Drugs, hemorrhaging over $1,000,000,000,000 (yes- that's trillion) in a grossly failed attempt to stop drug trafficking. All of this money, time, resources, and human life were squandered on battling the importation of natural substances such as cocaine and marijuana. How much of that money was spent of drug education and drug treatment? A very small fraction- we got Just Say No and D.A.R.E.

The truly frightening statistics with drug-related deaths and illnesses aren't found in the shady world of street trafficking, but right in front of our faces. We are exposed on a daily basis to a LEGAL drug industry which makes far more money than the ILLEGAL one with Big Business and their pharmaceuticals. While 10,000 people die from Illegal Drug Use per year in our country, a whopping 100,000 die from legal prescription drugs which were pushed by Doctors, Television Ads, Clinics and anyone else getting their pocket lined by Drug companies. These manufacturers hire lobbyists to corrupt Washington AND the FDA into not holding them accountable for these preventative deaths. Pharmaceuticals are the #1 cause of death in the United States annually and are statistically 10x more lethal than all street drugs combined.

An American is arrested every 30 seconds for violating Marijuana laws. $500 is spent by our government EVERY second to fight such illegal drugs. Marijuana has NEVER killed a single person throughout thousands of years of medicinal, holistic, and cognitive use. The Top 20 Big Pharma drug manufacturers average nearly $25 Billion in revenue EACH...and caused 1 MILLION deaths in the past decade.

7 comments:

Drugs companies and Big Pharma are not held responsible in any form or fashion for mass production and abuse. Recent crackdowns on prescription abuse have led to some good ideas such as drug take-back programs for unused pills. We have to hold physicians accountable also and help to inform the public of the problems with these medications which kill people from prolonged use and overdoses.

I wonder if any of you who ae condeming painkillers are ever in pain or have used these drugs? I am in severe pain on a frequent basis and the only quality of life I get or the ability to actually be able to do anything physical is from narcotic pain relief. Those against narcotic pain relief have probably never been in severe pain.

Unfortunately, I've seen both sides of this issue first hand having lost friends to abuse as well as seeing friends and family in need of pain relief through the narcotics produced by the these companies.

Nothing is a black and white issue and the pain medications are legitimately needed by some people to function. The real problem is over-prescribing medication and allowing people to become abusive from a lack of moderation and management. I think we all have to agree when it has become the #1 cause of death in our country, there IS a problem and we have to start holding the companies profiting billions of dollars from the sale and mass production of these dangerous substances. Tobacco and Alcohol companies are forced to spend money to help curb addiction and inform the public. Big Pharma should be held to even higher standards considering we are in the midst of an epidemic.

people with cancer, severe back or neck problems,etc. need these medications of course the doctors would rather due surgery because then they would need more surgeries where they could make more money. They fuse the places together; then you have limited movement!!!!then another surgery then u have even more limited movement!!! The Government should buy a few DRUG COMPANIES & you could get the medications cheaper & not cost tax payers these high costing drugs!!!!! They could let Medicaid patients go to Charity Hospitals like people that have to go to for treatment that can not afford treatment other wise. Some of these Medicaid patients go to the Emergency rooms frequently because they are not paying for it & they do not have to wait for an appointment or wait in Dr.'s office.

Watch movie called "GRASS". IT tells the story of how useful grass is for you. The amount of money the GOVERNMENT spends to combat it's use because they want to keep Drug Companies in business; which I am sure the GOVERNMENT gets a KICKBACK!!!!! Plus they can use that money spent on D.A.R.E. & drug enforcement to catch crimminals like MURDERERS, KIDNAPPERS,PEDOPHILES ALL THE REAL CRIMMINALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!